


Idol, Fried

by KChasm



Series: Smooch-tober 2018 [2]
Category: Persona 4
Genre: Angst, Gen, tofu - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 04:34:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16360892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KChasm/pseuds/KChasm
Summary: Risette returns to Inaba.Rise Kujikawa returns to Inaba.It's one of those, probably.





	Idol, Fried

**Author's Note:**

> My entry for day 2 of Smooch-tober ("blowing a kiss"), completed on day 20 of Smooch-tober.
> 
> I should have day 31 completed by August 6, 2019.

This is how to be an idol.

An idol should dance. An idol should sing. An idol should do both competently—although the requirement isn’t stringent. Any difference, ultimately, can be made up. Choreography can be carefully orchestrated to move stumbling feet into angles to hide them from view. Parts and notes and lyrics can be rewritten specially for those with dull voices.

There is only one thing that must be maintained: An idol must _flirt_.

No, not like that—never like that—of _course_ not that. No overt gestures, no straightforward seduction. But an idol must allow the _possibility_. On the stage, in front of the cheering crowd, an idol must execute the painstakingly rehearsed: turn, step, wink—blow a kiss. As if there could be love to catch, if anyone only knew the right method of return.

It’s an illusion, of course. The kiss is for everyone; the kiss is for no one. By the time Rise quits (says “hiatus”), she has blown so many kisses the world might as well love her, whoever it loves. And while they’re busy loving _her_ , she goes back home, to Inaba, where she can sell tofu.

It’s a much easier kind of self-maintenance, selling tofu.

Her grandmother’s shop is in the older part of town. It’s the part that skews more toward adult customers who are less interested in idols (the part of town that’s dying, in other words) so for the first few days she passes almost entirely beneath anyone’s notice—though she _does_ get get that pointed look, now and then, the one that says she’s not exactly supposed to be here, because she already chose a place to go and she’s not allowed to choose back.

She responds by ignoring those looks, wholeheartedly. She can ignore all the looks, now that she is helping her grandmother sell tofu (and that’s all she is selling, now). There’s little danger of being let go, when it’s family she’s working for. As long as she prepares the tofu, and gives over the tofu, and takes the appropriate amount of money in exchange for tofu, she doesn’t have to care about what anyone’s thinking. She doesn’t even have to care what anyone’s thinking of her, which means she can be as sad or stressed or sullen as she’d like.

And then the rest of them, the ones that _are_ interested in idols, find out where she’s working.

She has a bout of panic. It’s a little less than half an hour long and spent silently staring into the corner of her room (the screaming is on the inside; an idol must only ever scream on the inside, else they damage the throat). It cuts off, quite abruptly, when Rise remembers that she is no longer an idol, which means that she doesn’t have to dance, and she doesn’t have to sing, and above all, _she doesn’t have to flirt_.

It makes her feel better. Still terrible, but better, even when the group of high schoolers actually bother to look past her grandmother guarding the front counter (she loves her grandmother) and find Rise directly.

She thinks they’re fans, at first, mostly because the one who talks the most _is_ —he’s no good at pretending he isn’t, and the ribbing he gets for it just confirms it—but it turns out that while they’re here for her, they’re not here for her for _that_. The boy with the headphones shifts, and stammers, and is conspicuously starstruck, but also manages to spill out a warning about kidnappers and strange television channels. For a second she considers the odds of it being pretend—some megafan disconnected enough from reality to think playing manga protagonist might get him closer to Risette—

But there’s something painfully honest about him, something in the way he grimaces at every word coming out of his own mouth that makes her decide to believe him. That his worry is real, and not just worry she’ll call him out on a lie.

(And besides, she saw it, didn’t she? The Midnight Channel. Saw it, and tried to come up with some explanation for the broadcast. Had someone been waiting for her? And if so, who? Some _well-meaning_ fan without boundaries, trying to cheer her up by showing her the last thing she wanted to see right now? Her ex-manager, trying to push her over the brink because mental instability would be a better excuse to fire her? She spent an hour running the paranoid track in her mind, dismissing and reconsidering, before finally falling dead asleep.)

But it’s fine.

It’s pitiful, but it’s fine. He can pretend not to be a fan of Risette, and she’ll pretend not to be Risette at all. It’s funny, even—makes her smile, which makes him smile, too (unsteadier than hers), which makes her think, somehow, that maybe she might be able to pull off not being an idol, after all.

(When he orders ganmodoki, she slips him the bigger pieces.)


End file.
